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London’s Blow-up Metro Club Takes Midas
In central London, the small but perfectly-formed Blow-Up Metro club has been upgrading its house sound system, investing in a 32-channel Midas Verona audio mixing console supplied by Shuttlesound.
Named as Time Out's Venue of the Year in 2003, the Metro is a small basement venue on Oxford Street that hosts a great line-up of shows and clubs almost every night of the week, the central location making it one of the places to catch up-and-coming bands. The Metro Club is presented by Blow Up, the promoters who took over the Metro in November 2001. Since that time, gig highlights have included to name a few: Yeah Yeah Yeahs` headline debut UK gig, The Kills, Kings Of Leon, the Bravery and the Scissor Sisters.
With live music six nights a week, and up to four bands a night, the Metro's sound system has to meet heavy demand. Currently, the 175-capacity club uses an ASS system leased from Tarsin Entertainment, but the purchase of the Midas Verona console is the first time that owners Paul Tunkin and Alan Campbell have invested in equipment themselves. Our choice of a Midas has been largely dictated by the club's need for fast turnarounds," explains Paul Tunkin. “With so many visiting engineers, it was vital that the console was well-known and ergonomically user-friendly.”
One of the two house engineers is Alex Bonifacio, who is mightily pleased with the club's new purchase. “The quality of sound is unbelievable, these are some of the sweetest and most reliable pre-amps I ever heard in my life. Now we have eight multifunction channels, which save so much space: if we share drums on one channel, we can set up the board for all the acts that will play in one evening.”
Bonifacio regularly babysits for the visiting engineers, and is pleased to report that “this is like a Ferrari of desks (editor's note: he is Italian!), but it is actually very forgiving. Even someone who doesn't have a huge amount of experience can always make it work because of its simple layout.”
In picture: Paul Tunkin, who runs the Blow-Up Metro club.
31st January 2005
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